


Arrived

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21809674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Starting with eskimo kisses before moving on to soft kisses.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Kudos: 29





	Arrived

She’s home from hospital and caught in the void between dying and living. It doesn’t seem quite real. She turns the word over in her mind, on her tongue. Remission. It comes from the Latin meaning to send back. But where is she going back to? What path will she take now that she has been given a second chance? What path should she take? Shouldn’t she be moving forward, moving on?

Steam unfurls from her mug, a gossamer cloud on the kitchen window. She should dust, she thinks, looking around. Polish. Put things back in their proper place. One of her most powerful regrets when she was really sick was the thought that her mother, and maybe Mulder, would have to clean up her life, left so disorderly from her work. Typically an organised person, she’d let things drift away, carelessly tossed things into drawers in an enduring fit of anarchic rage against the system. Later, she’d loosened the shackles of order through apathy – what use was a system? And later still, order was the routine of chemo and bloods and prayer.

In the last days, guilt had seared her bones. It wasn’t right that those grieving her should also be left with the mundanity of her paperwork caused her to lose too much sleep. Mulder had laughed at her.

“What would you find at my joint, Scully? My teen journal declaring my hormonally-charged lust for Jennifer Preston and the birthmark on her inner right thigh? Vehicle insurance bills for an old engineless Chevy in a lock-up in Chilmark? Subscriptions to Spooks and Spectres International.”

“I thought that went out of print years ago,” she’d quipped and he really laughed then, squeezing her hands while his eyes never left her face. God, he was hurting. She was hurting him and it ate away at her, the thought of him tilting at windmills without her to straighten him up.

And what of Mulder now? Where does her recovery leave him? Sometimes she believes his heart beats only for a cause. And these past months, she’s been the cause. She sips the ginger tea – her stomach is still unsettled – and thinks that he’s in a kind of remission too. Her insides warm a little. He gets a second chance.

Later, he visits, bearing romance novels and dark chocolate and a CD of classical favourites.

“An improvement on Superstars of the Superbowl, Mulder, you’ve really lifted your game,” she says and he smiles loosely.

“How are you feeling?” He dips his shoulders and head as he speaks, gauging her reaction.

She shrugs. “All the better for seeing you.” It’s a truth.

His smile lifts and he’s like a child eagerly accepting the good news. He steps forward and folds his fingers around her upper arms. She stiffens and he rubs up and down until she relaxes into him. A sudden blur of tears stings her eyes. The reality of him being here, with her, not having to chase monsters on her behalf rushes at her and her knees soften. His chin rests on her crown, the heavy weight of him the best kind of comfort.

They stand like that for a while, his fingers still brushing her arms, before he pulls his head back, brackets her chin with his thumb and forefinger, and lowers his face so that they are nose-to-nose. Her mind supplies her with all the things that are off-kilter here. Height difference. Mismatched features. Incompatible personalities. But they fit. He rubs his nose against hers so gently that her breath catches in her throat. If she stops breathing, stills her body, she will only feel his.

Pushing down further, his lips press against her skin, under her nose, the side of her mouth, then her lips. So tentative, so tender. It’s Mulder’s beating heart starting up again. She can feel it, pulsing against her chest as his kisses seek her approval. She responds, grateful for the rhythm of his life.

She’s not sure where they’re going back to but in this moment, she’s grateful just to have arrived.


End file.
